I was emailed by a new Gig-Getter Newsletter subscriber last week. A young guy clearly in a rush and looking for a "short-cut" to get him and his band mates out there live as quickly as possible.


Many musicians have asked about the key steps to getting gigs and I can generally condense it down to around 10 steps. This though was the first time I'd had to consider whether there was one factor more important than the others.

It certainly focused my thinking but ultimately getting gigs as a weekend warrior or for a new band, revolves around a series of inter-dependent steps. To maximize your live work, to "Get more gigs than you can play" (as I say about the Gig-Getter system), you need to work on all the steps.

There is though, as I told the enquirer, one key to making all this work. That key is commitment. You have to commit to your gig-getting goals, how many times you want to be playing a month, what price you want to go out for, what sort of venues you'll play at. And, not least of all, commit to pitching your band to new venues every week.

This last point doesn't need to take up a lot of time. But when you've done all the preparation I talk about in terms of understanding your bands USP's, rehearsals etc you should be approaching new venues every week. Devote at least an hour a week without fail. This is real commitment and is very different from the kind of band which occasionally calls into a bar with a demo CD.

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